Thursday, January 21, 2010

First full week of homeschooling...

So tomorrow will be the last day of our first full week of homeschooling...and I am ready for it!

I spent 2 weekends making up our own curriculum with the A Beka books the boys got from school. I made 4 weeks worth of lesson plans in a daily calendar for all four boys.

I am just now realizing the work that I had planned for the big boys is too much per day...that Jackson and Aidan hate doing worksheets...Aidan especially...we have 2 days out of the next 2 weeks that we will not even be home but I have already made lesson plans for those days... I don't have any arts or crafts for the little ones...we are all already dreading school everyday!!!

I asked the kids what we could do to make homeschooling more fun...all they could give me was "We want recess!", which doesn't really make sense because they do have a "recess" time, so I was pretty much on my own for ideas.

So I had been thinking about it for the last 2 days and I thought of a few things to make things go more smoothly and make things more fun for the boys...

-Getting started earlier so we are not still working on a lot of stuff after lunch...not too early now! We had been starting at about 9:30...

Here is my proposed schedule:

7-8 am- get dressed, eat breakfast, clean up a little

8-830 am- Bible reading time

8:30-10:30 am-schooltime

10:30-10:45- snacktime

10:45- 12:30- more schooltime

12:30-1 pm- lunchtime!

1pm-2pm quiet reading time

2pm- finish any extra schoolwork!

-More internet time for the boys...Starfall and Spelling City

- Plan field trip days every 2-3 weeks

-Some sort of PE

-And the most exciting thing so far...Lapbooks!

I am so excited about the lapbooks! I did some research on the internet about them and I am really excited about doing them with the boys! I was a little worried about how we would do that on top of all their regular subjects but then I thought about doing them with their textbooks! Instead of doing History and Science we are going to make lapbooks for each chapter and learn about them that way! I have a dinosaur one planned for Jackson and a Fruits of the Spirit one planned for all of them to do. I am still brainstorming for ideas for one for Aidan...

So although we started out rough...I am looking forward to the coming weeks when I finally have my act together and the kids are actually having fun AND learning!